Posts tagged with "Before & After":

And another glass and metal addition is set to rise atop a low-rise building in the Meatpacking District. The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has voted to approve the BKSK-designed topper to the two-story building at 9–19 9th Avenue, which is best known for housing Keith McNally's famous French bistro, Pastis.
An alternate proposal by the firm was shot down by the LPC in May, in what Curbed described as a heated, and very, very crowded, hearing. According to the blog, local residents called the addition “garish,” “a disoriented layer cake,” and “an obliteration of a historic district.” BKSK has a positive track record of working with Landmarks, however, and the firm came back with a revised plan, which has just won the LPC’s blessing.
Harry Kendall, a principal at the firm, told AN that the while the structure has largely stayed the same, the “architectural language of the design” has changed. Essentially, BKSK is using less glass. “The metal frame has taken a more central role as an element of the facade and glass panels are clipped between the frames as a secondary element,” Kendall said.
He explained that at the hearing in May, the commission suggested BKSK work harder to do less. “We did that,” Kendall said. “We applied ourselves diligently to doing less.”
But, according to Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, less is not enough. “We are extremely disappointed with this vote, the last to take place under outgoing LPC Chair Tierney,” Berman said in a statement. “Once more the Commission approved a design in direct contradiction to their own prior recommendations, in which they told the applicant to substantially change the design, and that it was too large (the size of the addition is relatively unchanged).”
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To understand the changes that lead up to the approval, AN overlaid the original (below) design with the approved plan in this before and after. Due to the varying angles of each rendering, the before may appear slightly skewed.

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The so-called "courtscraper"—a marriage of the European courtyard block and the American skyscraper—by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is rapidly rising on New York City's Hudson River waterfront. Officially called West 57 and under development by the Durst Organization, the 870,000-square-foot rental tower will stand 32-stories tall on the western edge of the starchitecture-studded 57th Street. BIG recently shared this construction view showing progress as of June 9, and we overlaid a model of the finished tower over top of it to give it a little more scale. View the before and after by sliding back and forth on the image above. The building is expected to be complete in 2015.

Although Houston has been expanding outward for decades, its bus system has hardly kept up. This is not surprising given the track record for many American cities where cars take precedence over public transit. But what is unexpected—to the point of being radical—is a proposal that will grant greater, more efficient access to Houston’s commuters for not a penny more than its current cost.
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How do these numbers run? Proponents of the plan explained that their efforts will not be to add to or subtract from the bus system so much as gut and rewire it completely. As it stands now, Houston’s Metro is terribly inefficient. It eats up most of its money in duplicate routes and lines that cater to the needs of a few instead of servicing the greater public, the group asserted. The new proposal wants to recalculate the routes for higher commuter accessibility that would lead to higher traffic and maximum fiscal efficiency.
The current system is heavily oriented towards the downtown area, despite the fact that Houston has steadily decentralized for decades. Most of the proposal relies upon the realignment of the lines through neighborhoods that would use them. Although some people would no longer have ready access to the bus—with “ready” being defined as having to walk a quarter mile or more—the plan compensates for their toil by offering other nearby transportation outlets.
The only catch, if it can even be called that, is that the plan’s completion is strongly contingent upon community support and approval. Public planning consultant Jarrett Walker pointed out that people who like the plan “falsely assume it will happen anyway.” Walker went on to emphasize that the plan will not happen without strong community vocalization. So go ahead! If you live in the Houston area, weigh in. If not, your comments are always welcome here.

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How the greenway might look as it passes through Expressway Park.
As AN reported in our latest Southwest edition, Baton Rouge and New Orleans are gearing up for changes across their respective urban landscapes with two new master plans by landscape architecture firm Spackman Mossop Michaels. The firm has shared these before and after views of the proposed Baton Rouge Greenway, which provides "a vision for a greenway that connects City-Brooks Park near LSU’s campus on the south side of the city to the State Capitol grounds to the north, while stitching together adjoining neighborhoods and other smaller landscaped areas along the way" Slide back and forth to see existing conditions and SMM's plans for the area and be sure to learn more about the projects in AN's news article.
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How the greenway could enter the park at the terminus of North 7th Street.
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Design concept street section through North 7th Street in Spanish Town.
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The design option for the street section through North 7th Street.
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The design option for the street section through North Boulevard.
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A wider, straight path going down the median of North Boulevard.
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How the greenway might look on this part of North 7th Street.
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What the greenway would look like going down the median of East Boulevard.
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A design option for the street section through East Boulevard.

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As AN reported in our recent Southwest edition, Michael Van Valkenburgh is hard at work on plans for a massive park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to the article, "The community expressed a strong need for the park to accommodate not just children, but the whole family unit. Having a variety of activities for a wide age range became a primary factor in the development of the design." The $300 million waterfront plan is expected to be complete by 2017. MVVA shared this set of renderings with AN to keep us excited in the meantime.
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The streets of downtown Seattle are set for a major overhaul, thanks to a new masterplan by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. As AN reported in our recent West Coast edition, the Seattle-based firm has made recommendations to improve the pedestrian realm "centers on uniting the fragmented parts of the Pike-Pine corridor, two major thoroughfares at the heart of the retail core running east-west from Interstate 5 to the waterfront."
Check out their dramatic proposed transformations overlayed on Seattle's existing streetscape for a better look at how pedestrians and cyclists will fare under the plan.
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Thanks to new EPA regulations, Silver Lake is saying goodbye to it reservoir. But resident Catherine Geanuracos hopes the community will soon be saying hello to something new: a body of water repurposed for recreation, complete with lap lanes, an open swim area, and a miniature beach.
As the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) prepares to drain Silver Lake Reservoir and the adjoining Ivanhoe Reservoir and reroute the city’s drinking water supply through underground pipes, Geanuracos’s organization, Swim Silver Lake, is urging city officials to transform the area into a destination for serious swimmers and casual beach-goers alike.
Geanuracos says that she, like many Silver Lake residents, has often wondered how the Silver Lake Reservoir Complex might be put to public use. “Every time I run [around it], I’m like, ‘why can’t I go swimming in it?’” she said. “It’s an amazing space that hardly anyone has access to.” This fall, when Geanuracos first heard about plans to drain the reservoir, she realized the time for action was here. She launched Swim Silver Lake less than a month ago, at her own birthday party. Over 700 people have signed up online to support the project.
Swim Silver Lake will be presenting their proposal to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council in February. In the meantime, Geanuracos is scheduling meetings with key government players, including the LADWP, the Los Angeles City Council, and the mayor’s office. She recognizes that the novelty of her idea poses a particular challenge. “It’s not like there’s a precedent for how you do this, because we haven’t had this opportunity before,” she said.
Geanuracos is also looking for assistance from the local design community. “I’m not a planner, not an expert, but hopefully we’ll find some folks [with the right skills],” she said. “It could be an amazing project for a student team or a young firm.”

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New York City has been adjusting to its new Mayor Bill De Blasio, who took office at the beginning of the year. The new mayor has been slowly revealing his team of commissioners who will guide the city's continued transformation. As AN has noted many times before, De Blasio's predecessor Michael Bloomberg and his team already left a giant mark on New York's built environment.
With little more than paint, planters, and a few well-placed boulders, Bloomberg and former Transportation CommissionerJanette Sadik-Khan's street interventions have been some of the most evident changes around the city. Whether it's at Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza, above, or at Snøhetta's redesigned Times Square, these road diets shaved off excess space previously turned over to cars and returned it to the pedestrian realm in dramatic fashion as these before-and-after views demonstrate.
As we continue to learn more about our new Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, take a look back at 25 of the most exciting road diets and pedestrian plaza conversions across New York City from the Bloomberg era.
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Location: Allen and Pike Streets in the Lower East Side.
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Location: Holland Tunnel Area.
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Location: St. Nicholas Avenue & Amsterdam Avenue.
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Location: Allen and Pike Street in the Lower East Side.
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Location: Harlem River Park Gateway.
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Location: Herald Square.
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Location: Harlem River Park Gateway.
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Location: Broadway at Times Square.
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Location: 12th Avenue West at 135th Street.
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Location: Holland Tunnel Area.
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Location: Louis Nine Boulevard.
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Location: Delancey Street in the Lower East Side.
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Location: Prospect Park West.
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Location: Broadway at Times Square.
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Location: Broadway & West 71st Street.
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Location: Union Square.
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Location: Columbus Avenue.
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Location: Union Square.
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Location: Water and Whitehall Streets.
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Location: Union Square.
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Location: Randall and Leggett Ave.
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Location: Grand Army Plaza at the entrance to Brooklyn's Prospect Park.
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Location: Hoyt Avenue at the RFK Bridge.
All photos courtesy New York City Department of Transportation.